Assassin's Game

FIFTY-ONE

Slaton’s head was just out of the water, having risen from the lake mere seconds before the explosion — the only sure way to protect his ears from the concussive effect of the blast. Even fifty yards away and above the surface, the submarine blast was deafening. A wave of energy struck his wetsuit-clad body as it transferred through the frigid water, but Slaton’s eyes remained locked on the slow-moving ship. Entrepreneur seemed to hesitate for a moment, teetering on a foaming section of lake a hundred yards from the dock, her silhouette framed by the city’s shimmering reflections.

Water dripped from Slaton’s camouflaged boonie hat, but he remained completely motionless. One eye was fixed to his thermal imaging optic, but at any instant he could shift to the fixed night sight of the MP7. His stillness was a stark contrast to the scene forty yards away. Entrepreneur was foundering quickly, her back broken, and the bow and stern had already begun to list in opposite directions. Water frothed from a breach amidships and flames belched from the waterline, the latter a result of compromised fuel lines that would soon carpet the lake in fire. All anticipated. For a brief moment Slaton wondered if he’d overdone the Semtex. But only for a moment.

Smoke on the water … The classic Deep Purple song, recounting a fire on the opposite shore of Lake Geneva, was tonight being rewritten.

He kept the MP7’s black barrel trained loosely on the stern section — the site of the gala, and where nearly everyone had been at the moment of detonation. Forward of the breach he saw only a handful of crew and hired help. The guests were surging aft, away from the blaze. Again, precisely as anticipated. Slaton began shifting his optic with sharp, mechanical corrections, settling on each flailing body for the necessary two seconds. With roughly forty people to sort through, he concentrated on small groups, knowing Hamedi would be quickly surrounded by security staff wanting to steer their principal to safety. And on this sinking ship, safety meant one thing — at the stern, hanging on a pair of davits, a skiff with an outboard motor. There were other lifeboats, of course, but these were less obvious and not yet deployed, so Slaton reasoned that Hamedi’s guardians would move aft and commandeer the seventeen-foot Boston Whaler. Any quaint laws of the sea regarding women and children would be decisively overruled by their submachine guns.

The crewmen were distributing life jackets, but this too Slaton had foreseen. He hoped he had predicted every complication because the next two minutes would be critical, indeed the part of the plan that had concerned him from the beginning. Amid the smoke and chaos of a sinking ship, he had to identify Ibrahim Hamedi. Slaton kept shifting, looking through the sight and studying thermal images as rising flames licked the water. Waves of smoke rolled through his field of view, obscuring the ship for brief intervals, but Slaton held fast, held patient, long enough to eliminate potential targets one by one. On his fifteenth shift the kidon caught a glimpse of what he was after.

A group of three, the men on the flanks brandishing weapons and hauling the man in the middle by the elbows. Slaton had to be sure, so he kept watching. When one of the guards stumbled he got a clear look and saw what he wanted — one clear band over the left shoulder. It wasn’t a brilliant difference — you would have to know to look for it in the first place — but the variance in thermal signature was conclusive. Two subtly discrete coefficients of heat retention in the cool evening air.

Scotchgard.

Hamedi.

For the first time Slaton’s finger engaged his trigger. The kidon knew who to kill.

Slaton submerged and began breathing again through the high-pressure regulator, kicking briskly to close the gap. Sight was useless in the pitch-black lake, so he went with dead reckoning, using his initial bearing and knowing precisely how fast he could swim at flank speed in full scuba gear — the kind of thing a kidon had to know.

He surfaced, by the luminescent hands of his Movado watch, twenty-eight seconds later, this time rising without any attempt at stealth. He saw a crewman trying to run the davit motors to lower the Whaler, but it was fast becoming an exercise in futility as the lake rose to meet Entrepreneur’s sinking stern. So the sailor waited, and when he had enough slack he simply untethered the runabout. The crewman was the first to climb in, and Hamedi went next, half-guided, half thrown into the boat by his minders, one large and one small, who quickly followed. As the crewman went to the helm, four more Iranians — looking ridiculous in dark business suits, orange life jackets, and carrying submachine guns — reached Entrepreneur’s disappearing stern. Two made the leap to the drifting Whaler. Two didn’t.

With the gap increasing between the boats, Slaton’s target was effectively separated and his defenses quantified. Four guards and a crewman had reached Hamedi, two others remained nearby. Slaton shifted from the viewing optic to the MP7’s sight. It was time to live by an assassin’s rules. Anyone with a weapon died. And those with the biggest weapons died first. From twenty yards his first target’s head appeared massive. Slaton widened his legs to stabilize in the water and settled his sight, already planning his next two shots. He gave a quick double tap, and a guard who was trying to step across — one leg on the yacht and another on the Whaler — crumbled into the divide between the boats. The second man on Entrepreneur, his semiautomatic still strapped to his chest, had a bullet in his head before his partner hit the water.

Slaton’s gun was suppressed for sound, but the guards were trained and so they knew they were under attack. Using his long fins, Slaton spun left and settled his sight on the Whaler. One of the guards was tall and obvious, and Slaton traded shots with the man. A round from his MP7 found home as the water to his right exploded. Uncomfortably close.

Then he heard shouting. “There! In the water!”

More shouts from the sinking yacht. The kidon submerged.

With strong kicks Slaton swam straight under the Whaler, the boat’s dark outline clear in the dancing orange reflections. He popped up this time on the shore side, his MP7 ready and new angles of fire already fixed in his head. But he could not shoot indiscriminately. With the optic he positively identified a guard at the bow, fired and watched him go overboard when hit. Hamedi’s protection was now down to two — but they began learning. They fell to the deck and disappeared, leaving Slaton no shot. Rounds suddenly exploded all around him, the water churning like a blender. He snap-sighted on a figure near the stern of the yacht, but before he could fire his MP7 jerked to one side. Slaton felt stinging pain in his scalp and saw that his gun sight was gone, nothing but the jagged metal bracket remaining. He answered with a quick, unsighted double, and his target twisted but stayed on his feet. Slaton fired again from twenty yards and finished the job.

He submerged again knowing time was short. It was time to get close.

It was time to take Hamedi.

Behrouz was scrambling on the deck of the Whaler when a foot caught him in the face. He looked up and saw Hamedi backing away.

“The Israelis!” the scientist screamed. “They are after me again! Don’t you see that?”

Behrouz didn’t know what to think. The Israelis were attacking. But what of the words he’d heard slip from Hamedi’s mouth only minutes ago? There was no time to think about it. He screamed at the white-uniformed crewman at the little boat’s helm. “Get us out of here!” Behrouz pointed his handgun at the man to leave no room for questions.

The crewman’s eyes went wide — wider than they already were with bodies and mayhem all around. He cranked the outboard motor and it came to life, and from a kneeling position the man put the motor into gear and slammed the throttle forward. There was a roar from the back of the boat but nothing happened. They went nowhere.

“What is wrong?” Hamedi shouted.

“I don’t know,” the helmsman said. “We must be hung up on something. Maybe a line.”

Bravely, the man lifted his head above the gunnel and looked over the side. Then he moved aft and looked over the stern.

“The propeller is gone!” he shouted.

The propeller, in fact, had been removed forty minutes earlier and was now resting on the bottom of Lake Geneva. The crewman, befuddled by the missing prop but growing more confident, leaned in for a closer look. He never saw the gloved hand come out of the water.

Slaton got a fistful of uniform collar, braced against the boat’s hull, and pulled the sailor over his shoulder and into the lake. Having removed his scuba rig, he vaulted over the stern with the Glock ready. He was breaching the point of least freeboard, the most vulnerable position to defend, so he expected Hamedi’s two remaining men to have their weapons already trained in his direction. He only saw one, and much closer than expected. Only an arm’s length away.

In an instantaneous decision, Slaton shifted his momentum and threw himself on the man.

He crashed in hard, but his hand struck something and the Glock flew from his grip. The man was big, but he was flat on his back. Slaton lashed an elbow to the head that slowed the Iranian, but he kept fighting — the determination of an old soldier who’d battled for his life before. They grappled and locked arms, heading for a stalemate that was not in Slaton’s favor. He sensed something under his free hand, and recognized by feel what it was. Working a hand free, he pulled the anchor line until he had enough slack, then managed to loop it around the man’s neck. One handed, he had little leverage, but then he caught a break — his adversary panicked.

The big Iranian put both hands to his throat and tried to pry the rope away. That was all Slaton needed. He didn’t pull, but twisted, tightening the noose in a powerful grip. The Iranian struggled fiercely, but that only used more oxygen and made his life that much shorter. In less than a minute it was over.

But a minute was far too long.

Slaton rolled away and saw the boat’s last two occupants. Ibrahim Hamedi was backed against the starboard side. Across the beam, down on one knee, was Farzad Behrouz.

Slaton’s Glock was in his hand.